Who was Jo Baxi?

[10ClarionSt]

This seems to have made it's way into the language doesn't it? There's even a taxi company round here called Jo Baxis. So who was Jo Baxi?

[Postdog]

can honestly say I've never heard it in my life.

However, just google and they say it's cockney rhyimng slang for a taxi!!

Come on, I'm cockney and I reckon they are having a bubble!

Anyway this site says he was a heavyweight boxerhttp://www.freelang.net/dictionary/html_cockne y_english.html

[Rowland2094]

Baxi was a boxer who had a "famous" fight with another boxer called Woodcock. (Bruce?) not sure

[BillySugger]

Seems obvious it's rhyming slang

[fredpuli47]

The reference is to Joe Baksi, a top American heavyweight, once the third ranked contender for the title in the 1940s.He was particularly well known to Londoners because he fought Bruce Woodcock, British champion, at Harringay in 1947. Woodcock was knocked down three times in the first round and twice in the second,but fought on gamely until the referee stopped the fight in the seventh. In 1946 Baksi had fought another British hero of the ring, Freddie Mills (world light heavyweight champion 1948-1950), Mills being retired in the sixth.

[fredpuli47]

10ClarionSt: Thanks. Joe Baksi is one of only two American sportsmen who made it into regular London slang. The other is the jockey Tod Sloan, who only rode in England for 'three and a bit' seasons ( end 1897- to early 1900) . Both were sufficiently colourful or eccentric characters, and successful, that they caught the imagination. (Sloan gave us 'on your tod' for 'alone'. Here he introduced the practice of riding with very short leathers, 'like a monkey on a stick' used now but then thought completely mad). Joe Baksi was just a bit before my time (fighting in the year I was born) but was still remembered for years afterwards.